1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a clothes dryer.
2. Background
A clothes dryer is an apparatus that supplies dry air into a drum in which clothes are placed in order to dry the clothes. The clothes dryer may be classified as an exhaust type clothes dryer that exhausts air discharged from a drum out of the clothes dryer or a circulation type clothes dryer that circulates air discharged from a drum and resupplies the circulated air into the drum.
In the circulation type clothes dryer, a filter cartridge is provided in a circulation channel in order to prevent foreign matter, such as lint or dust, floating in the air discharged from the drum from being introduced into the drum again. The filter cartridge is configured so as to be separable from the clothes dryer such that a user separates the filter cartridge from the clothes dryer and removes foreign matter from the filter cartridge.
The filter cartridge may be configured to have a dual filter structure in which an inside filter cartridge is received in an outside filter cartridge such that air passes through the inside filter cartridge, by which the air is primarily filtered, and then the air passes through the outside filter cartridge, by which the air is secondarily filtered.
Generally, the inside filter cartridge includes an inside front filter for filtering air that is introduced into the cartridge through an inlet port formed in the top surface thereof and flows forward and an inside rear filter for filtering air that is introduced into the cartridge through the inlet port and flows rearward. In the same manner, the outside filter cartridge includes an outside front filter and an outside rear filter provided at the front surface and the rear surface thereof so as to be aligned with the inside front filter and the inside rear filter, respectively.
In the above structure, however, the filters are provided in the circulation channel in the state in which the filters overlap one another, with the result that the circulation channel may be narrowed. In particular, even if the capacity of the drum is increased, it is difficult to increase the width of the space, in which the filter cartridges are mounted, in the forward and rearward direction. In the conventional structure in which the inside and outside filters are sequentially arranged in the forward and rearward direction, therefore, a stream of air may not smoothly pass through the filters.